Output vs Outcome: What’s the difference and where should I focus?

Let’s talk about output vs outcome, which one you should focus your attention on when, and why it matters.

Trust me, understanding this can be a game-changer. It’s a pretty crucial concept in Product Management, and it can really change how you think about both developing your product and strategizing for your business. 

What are outcomes in Product Management?

Outcomes are all about the change or benefits that happen because of what you’ve done, like launching a new feature or rolling out a product update. They’re the end game, the reason you’re doing all this work in the first place, aiming to deliver something that your customers and your business truly value.

Think of outcomes as your north star, guiding everything you do in Product Management. They help you stay focused on hitting those goals that matter, ensuring every feature, task, or new initiative is not just busywork but actually moving the needle in ways like boosting customer satisfaction, getting more people engaged, or bumping up that revenue.

What are outputs in Product Management?

On the flip side, outputs are the tangible things your team pumps out. We’re talking new features, bug fixes, updates, or any other deliverable your product team has on their plate.

Outputs are the stuff you can count, the things you can say, “Yep, we did that!” But here’s the kicker—just because you’re cranking out outputs doesn’t mean you’re automatically nailing those outcomes.

Sure, they’re easier to identify and measure because they are concrete things you can show as a result of the work you’ve done. But without looking at the effect the outputs have had on your product, you don’t even know if you’ve made the right thing.

So, to boil down output vs outcome: outputs are what you make, but outcomes are the changes (positive or negative!) those creations bring about.

Output vs outcome in practice

Output example: Picture this—you and your team have been burning the midnight oil to get a shiny new user onboarding tutorial up and running in your app. This tutorial, with all its snazzy video guides and interactive bits, is your output. It’s something tangible you’ve added to your app.

Outcome example: The true test comes when you see what happens after you launch that tutorial. If you start noticing fewer people bouncing in the first week or more users really diving deep into your app, those are your outcomes. It means your tutorial is doing its job, filling in a gap, and providing real value.

Understanding the difference between output vs outcome isn’t just semantics or an interesting side note. Choosing which to focus on is a decision that will impact your strategy, how you prioritize your work, measure success.

Ultimately, it could make all the difference to whether or not what you make improves your customer satisfaction and your company’s growth. By focusing on outcomes, you’re ensuring that your teams aren’t just doing busy work, but are busy working to make a meaningful difference.

How can you shift to being outcome-focused?

Shifting your mindset to be more outcome-focused means you’re not just ticking boxes; you’re aiming to make a real impact for your users and your business. It’s about getting to the heart of what your customers need, understanding the market, and making sure you’re putting your resources where they’ll make the biggest splash.

Being all-in on outcomes means setting clear, measurable goals that shine a light on what
success looks like for you. It’s about seeing beyond just finishing up tasks and fully understanding how these efforts tie back to bigger business goals.

How does being outcome-focused work?

An outcome-focused approach works by prioritizing the work that contributes to your key objectives, the things that are going to move the needle. Then you use measurable goals to determine what success looks like, and use that to guide what you work on next, and your development process generally.

In the battle of output vs outcome, committing to the outcome side will get you thinking strategically about what to build next based on what’ll have the biggest impact, not just what’s next on the feature list. It’s a mix of prioritizing based on impact, embracing agile and iterative development, making data-driven decisions, and always keeping the lines open for customer feedback.

Set clear, measurable goals

Being outcome-focused starts with clarity, and you gain that clarity by setting goals. Not just any goals, though. You want them to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This will let everyone on your team know what success looks like, and they’ll be able to align their efforts accordingly.

So, instead of saying, “We want to improve our app,” and then scratching your chin trying to work out how, you’d set a goal like, “Increase the app’s monthly active users by 20% within the next six months.”

See the difference? The second goal gives you a clear target to aim for and makes it easier to measure your progress.

Look beyond the to-do list

Here’s where the rubber meets the road when it comes to output vs outcome. Being outcome-focused means that every task, every feature, and every sprint has to clearly tie back to your goals. It’s not enough to have a busy team; you need a team that’s busy doing the right things. This is where you ask the tough questions: “How does this task help us achieve our goal? What’s the expected impact of this feature?”

This mindset encourages you to prioritize work based on its potential to move the needle on your key metrics, rather than just what’s next in the backlog or what seems like a good idea at the moment. It’s about making strategic choices that drive you closer to your desired outcomes.

What does being output-focused look like?

Taking an output-focused approach is all about quantity and checking things off the list. Success is measured by how much stuff you get done or how many features you push out, which might sound good, but it can lead you off course if you’re not careful.

There’s no problem with having an eye on outputs. But if you’re output-focused rather than outcome-focused, you’re almost certainly going to miss the ball. You’re just going to do what feels good or what you’ve measured in the past, but not necessarily things that are tied to the outcome.

Keeping track of outputs can show progress, it doesn’t guarantee you’re making the right kind of progress—the kind that aligns with your strategic goals and truly meets your users’ needs.

Example of being output-focused

Imagine a product team setting a goal to release a specific number of new features within a quarter. For instance, they decide to launch a new payment integration, add social sharing, and update their user interface – all within the next three months.

The primary measure of success here is whether these features are developed and released on schedule. All of the team’s efforts are going to be directed towards shipping those deliverables, with no real idea if what they are building addresses what their users want or contributes to their strategic business objectives. The focus is squarely on how much work they get done, and if they stick to their timelines.

Example of being outcome-focused

Now imagine that the same product team identifies a strategic goal to increase their user engagement by 20% over the next quarter. To make this happen, they suggest a range of ideas, like improving the user interface, adding new functionalities like social sharing, or integrating a new payment system.

The difference is that, instead of committing upfront to building specific features, they start by conducting user research and analyzing the data to understand which changes are most likely to boost engagement.

Maybe they decide to experiment by prototyping several ideas and testing them with a segment of their user base, measuring the impact on engagement metrics before fully rolling out the most effective changes.

The success of the team’s efforts here isn’t measured by how many features they’ve foisted on their ungrateful users, but by whether or not they hit their targeted increase in user engagement. Being outcome-focused encourages your team to experiment, adapt, and keep their eyes firmly on on delivering real value to your users and your business.

Where does ProdPad stand in the output vs outcome debate?

Need you ask??

For us, making and improving ProdPad is about more than just building a product; it’s about creating solutions that genuinely make a difference for our users and align with our business objectives. So, yes, we are outcome-focused.

Here’s how we look at it (and we eat our own dogfood – all of this is supported in ProdPad, which we use to help us build ProdPad!):

Setting clear OKRs

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are at the heart of how we guide our product development. OKRs help you to set and communicate those clear and measurable goals that reflect what you aim to achieve.

By setting out your OKRs, you’ll be able to prioritize work that directly contributes to these goals, ensuring that everything your teams are working on is aligned with the bigger picture.

Customer journey mapping

Understanding how people use your product is everything if you want to create something that delivers real value. That’s why we look to the process of customer journey mapping as a really useful tool to visualize the entire experience from the user’s perspective.

This method helps identify key touchpoints, pain points, and opportunities for improvement. By focusing on enhancing the user journey, teams can make informed decisions about where to invest their efforts to have the most significant impact on user satisfaction and engagement.

Lean roadmapping

Flexibility is key, and that’s where lean roadmapping comes in. Unlike traditional roadmaps that might lock you into a set path and a set timeline, lean roadmapping keeps things adaptable.

It’s about choosing what to work on based on how well it aligns with your goals, allowing you to shift your focus as needed. This approach ensures that you’re always working on what has the most impact, even as the situation changes around you.

The most well-known version of a lean roadmap is the Now-Next-Later format, which myself and my Co-Founder Simon actually invented. So it’ll come as no surprise that this is the lean roadmap format you’ll find within ProdPad.

Integrating feedback loops

Continuous feedback is a cornerstone of how we do things. Regularly gathering and incorporating feedback from users ensures that our product development is aligned with actual user needs and expectations.

This feedback loop allows us to validate our assumptions, learn from user interactions, and make data-driven decisions that enhance the product in meaningful ways.

Solving real problems

When it comes down to it, ProdPad, both as a company and as a product, is all about addressing actual user problems in the best way possible. It’s not just about adding new bells and whistles because you can.

Every decision, from developing new features to refining what you already have, needs to be driven by a genuine need to solve user issues. Focusing on problem-solving ensures that the work you’re doing is meaningful and truly enhances your user experience.

So, output vs outcome – which is better?

The question of whether being outcome-focused vs being output-focused is better doesn’t have a cut-and-dried, one-size-fits-all answer. It really depends on the context, like the lifecycle stage of your product, the nature of the market you’re targeting, and your organization’s strategic objectives.

That said, the general consensus among Product Management folks these days is that it’s better to be outcome-focused. It makes it easier to be sure that you’re delivering real value to your customers and the business. It fosters a culture of flexibility, innovation, and continuous learning, where your decisions are guided by the desire to achieve meaningful results, rather than just writing code to tick boxes.

Being outcome-focused encourages your teams to look past what’s easy or comfortable, and to consider the wider impact of their work on the product and the people who use it. It promotes working to gain a deeper understanding of what your customers truly need and a commitment to solving their problems in the most effective way possible.

Which, of course, will make people happier with your product, leading to more sustainable growth and success in the long term.

How do you measure your outcomes?

Alright, let’s get into the meat of measuring outcomes because, honestly, what’s the point of being outcome-focused if you can’t tell whether you’re actually making an impact? It’s like going on a diet and never stepping on a scale or looking in a mirror. You’re putting in the work, but how do you know it’s paying off?

Let’s break down how you can keep track of what truly matters and ensure that your product isn’t just spinning its wheels.

Setting the stage with clear, measurable goals

As I mentioned already, clarity is your best friend here. You’ve got to know exactly what you’re aiming for with your product. These goals should be so clear and measurable that anyone on your team can tell you if you’re on track or not (Hello again, OKRs and SMART).

This isn’t just about saying, “We want to make our app better.” It’s about stating, “We aim to increase our app’s user retention rate by 15% in the next quarter.” Boom. Clear, direct, and definitely measurable.

Diving deep with data

Data is the cornerstone of measuring outcomes. It’s not just about collecting numbers and stats for the sake of it. It’s about gathering insights that directly relate to your goals. This means tracking the right metrics that show whether you’re moving closer to your outcomes. For a user retention goal, you’d look at daily active users, session lengths, churn rate, and so on.

But here’s the catch: all that data can be overwhelming. The key is to focus on the metrics that matter most to your specific goals. And remember, data doesn’t just come from analytics tools. It also comes from user feedback, surveys, interviews – any source that gives you a clearer picture of how your product is impacting your users’ lives.

The power of regular reviews and adjustments

Measuring outcomes, like most things in Product Management, isn’t a one-and-done deal. It’s an ongoing process that requires regular check-ins. Think of it like driving a car. You don’t just get in, plug your destination into the GPS, and then start browsing on your phone (yet!).

Rather, you’re constantly turning the wheel and adjusting your speed to keep you on the road, unscathed. In other words, this means setting up regular reviews of your progress toward your outcomes, analyzing what the data is telling you, and being ready to pivot if something isn’t working as expected, rather than Fred Flintstone-ing into a tree. 

This agility is a superpower in Product Management. It allows you to respond to new insights, adapt to changes in the market or user behavior, and ensure that every effort is contributing to your overarching goals.

Aligning your team around outcomes

Last but definitely not least, it’s so, so important that your whole team understands and buys into these outcomes. They need to know not just what they’re working on, but why what they’re doing matters. Aligning your team will turn your goals into everyone’s shared mission, making it easier to prioritize work, make strategic decisions, and stay motivated even when the going gets tough.

Plus, when everyone is aligned on the outcomes, it’ll help you to foster a culture of accountability and ownership. When your people can see how their work contributes to the bigger picture, they’ll be more invested in the success of your product.

Output vs outcome = what vs why

Measuring outcomes is about more than tracking your progress; it’s about ensuring what you are doing as a Product Manager is genuinely effective and aligned with what your users and your business need.

By focusing on outcomes rather than outputs, setting clear goals, focusing on the right data, regularly reviewing your progress, and aligning your team, you turn the concept of being outcome-focused from a pipe dream into an actionable strategy that’ll drive real results.

And that, my friends, is how you make sure you’re not just busy, but busy making a difference.